Portrayal of ordinances in Dutcher's movies
I am a convert. I joined the Church in a ward that, to me, seemed to exemplify living by the spirit of the law. Later, I moved to another state, lived in several different communities, and have found that the letter of the law is more important out here. Here, I can get scorned for not marching in line like an automaton robot. I go to a concert and I get hassled. I watch an edited version of the Terminator and I get hassled. Meanwhile, I have a sister-in-law who is a sexist and refuses to read the Old Testament because she thinks Abraham was a mysogyinist. In fact, the majority of LDS people I come into contact with have not read the Bible all the way through, and some haven't even read Doctrine and Covenants or the Pearl of Great Price, and some people even hassle me if I choose to read from one of these standard works instead of the Book of Mormon.
This is the sort of mindset from which I usually hear complaints about Richard Dutcher's movies having portrayals of the ordinances in them. It usually comes from people who live their lives with their noses either in somebody else's business or in some sort of instruction manual that teaches them to pontificate, usurp Divine authority to cast judgment, and persecute, and all from a basis of gross imperfection, albeit unrecognized by themselves. These are the kind of people who drive away converts and investigators, and they have tested my faith.
On the other hand, the missionaries who taught me the Gospel, who carried with them a message from Heavenly Father and succeeded in helping me to recognize and feel the Spirit, drank caffeinated soft drinks when we had lunch together.
What is my point? Perhaps we would all do well to find something better to do with our time than to look down on others for not doing every little thing the same way we would in their position. That is arrogance. The Savior personified meekness, and expects it of us. He also said that the greatest commandments were to love God, and to love God's children. I hardly think that looking down on others and thinking that you're better than them because they don't share your opinions is the way to follow these two commandments.
A spiritual life, in which communion with God is achieved, is lived by hearkening to the still small voice, not by following a self written program and functioning like a machine. While it may seem unorthodox for Richard Dutcher to portray the Sacrament in his movies, that doesn't necessarily make it wrong.
After all, failure to adhere to orthodoxy was one of the chief complaints about Joseph Smith Jr. Did it make Tom Sharp or Lilburn Boggs right? Did it justify their actions?